fashionlistings.org Ephemeral Miniblog

Cardigans and the Quiet Majesty of Knitwear

It’s the cardigan. The cardigan doesn’t swagger into a room demanding attention. It arrives like an old friend with biscuits. It’s the clothing equivalent of a reassuring pat on the shoulder from a librarian who always remembers your name.

Cardigans are the astrophysicists of apparel: quietly brilliant, endlessly layered, slightly prone to static, and often underestimated. They pair with shirts, T-shirts, even the occasional panic-bought novelty tie, and somehow make it all feel intentional. Slip one on, and suddenly you’re the kind of person who can both explain dark matter and make a decent cup of tea.

There’s no bravado in a cardigan. No desperate need to impress. It says, 'He might have read Proust accidentally while looking for a guide to bird feeders. They’re the uniform of those who know commas matter and who’ve tried, at least once, to build something out of a broken toaster, string, and hope.

And when it starts to unravel? You don’t throw it out—you repair it. That’s love. That’s resilience. That’s knitwear.

The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of Platform Shoes

They’re still here. Hovering like a smoked salmon canapé at a funeral—utterly inappropriate but somehow too stubborn to leave. Platform shoes. Yes, those clunky, ankle-breaking stilts disguised as footwear, designed by someone who clearly hated spines. Every few years they come back, all glittery and smug, dragged from the fashion graveyard by people who think nostalgia should be worn, preferably with sequins.

You don’t walk in these things. You lurch. You wobble like a giraffe on a trampoline trying to hail a taxi. And for what? So you can look like you’re auditioning for a role as ‘Disco Goblin Number Four’ in a low-budget music video?

They’re not shoes—they’re architectural statements. They require scaffolding and a feasibility study. And yet, there they are, clomping along the high street like tragic monuments to bad decisions. People wear them with such confidence too, as if the laws of physics are just suggestions. Sure, Karen, you’re totally safe six inches off the ground beside a pothole and a pub.

The Brief, Blurry Reign of the Monocle

Wearing a monocle in the 2010s was like turning up to a UFC fight with a duelling glove. For a brief moment, hipsters looked at a century of fashion evolution, skipped past the eyepatch, and settled on the one accessory that screams “I’m an 1800s landlord evicting a chimney sweep.” It was steampunk cosplay for people who think Dickensian poverty is a vibe.

Somebody, somewhere – probably a man who refers to podcasts as “wireless transmissions” – decided that squinting through a single lens was the height of ironic sophistication. What’s next? Getting gout unironically? I saw one bloke wearing one in Shoreditch and honestly thought he was about to auction off a cursed Egyptian amulet.

If you need a magnifying glass to read Twitter, maybe you’re not supposed to be on Twitter. You’re meant to be haunting a lighthouse, or opening a cursed book in a thunderstorm. The monocle had its moment, and then died of sheer embarrassment. Good riddance, you optically-challenged warlock.